This Week In Congress

Congress is furiously working on Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations bills ahead of November 17, when the current continuing resolution expires. Each chamber of Congress is currently working on their separate bills and will need to work out their differences before they can be sent to the President to be signed into law.

With the November 17 deadline fast approaching, Senate leaders are discussing a CR that would run until mid-December. No final decision has been made, but that plan would put the Senate at odds with House Speaker Johnson who wants a CR that would run through sometime in January.

Fiscal Year 2024 Appropriations

House

Yesterday, the House passed the Legislative Branch appropriations bill (HR 4364), with a 4.7 percent cut from the FY’23 levels. This bill would prohibit diversity, equity, and inclusion programming, and zero out $3.5 million in funds for the House Office of Diversity and Inclusion. Today the Interior-Environment (HR4821) and Transportation-HUD (HR 4820) bills are being considered on the floor. If both pass, the House will have completed work on eight of its 12 appropriations bills.

LHHS in the House

One of the four remaining appropriations bills the House has not yet considered is the Labor, Health, and Human Services (LHHS) bill, which funds most of the federal government’s health funding. Earlier this week, House Republicans unveiled a revised version of their LHHS appropriations bill that includes new conservative social policy riders related to abortion, gun control and diversity. No changes were made to the CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention (where HIV and STD prevention is funded at CDC) or HRSA HIV Prevention funding in this revised bill. Speaker Mike Johnson has signaled he could send this revised bill to the full House during the week of Nov. 13 without a markup in committee.

Senate

Last evening the Senate passed its first three appropriations bills in a “minibus” package. The package contained the Senate Military Construction-VA (S 2127), Agriculture (S 2131) and Transportation-HUD (S 2437) measures.